A short dissertation on a word

 

Celebrating another birthday on that path to old age
note the walker I'm sitting in

The word that’s on my mind today is resilience. The dictionary defines it as the capacity to recover quickly from difficult circumstances. I think of it as the ability to bounce back. Several years ago I was in the hospital with stage four acute kidney failure, caused by an antibiotic that I should have known better than to take. I had already within recent years been hospitalized for a hip reconstruction (a fractured hip so bizarre that people in the hospital looked at me and said, “Oh, your ‘the hip’” and a diagnosis of atrial fibrillation. By this time I was feeling a bit down when a medical resident, a woman, came in to talk with me.

I said, “I guess this means that my health is going to change forever.” I was having a pity party, but I saw visions of dialysis three times a week dancing in my head. She replied, “Oh, I don’t know. You seem to be pretty resilient.” Right then, right there, that woman, probably unknown to her, gave me a great gift. I began to think of myself as resilient. I was in the hospital for six or seven days, but every day my creatinine (high is bad, low is good) came down. Eventually I went home and over the next months my creatinine came down almost to normal levels. The nephrologist saw me every three months, but my triumph came when he said, “I’ll see you in a year.”

I think so much of resilience is in our minds, and once I began to think of myself as resilient, I began to bounce back. Christian says I’ve been resilient about other things, like moving into the cottage. There are lots of things I cannot do these days, between the confines of the cottage and the limitations of my mobility: I cannot give the big parties I used to love or even the elaborate dinner parties for six that I loved. There are some recipes that I’d love to tackle but can’t with a hot plate and an toaster oven—those that boast of a skillet dinner you start on the stove and finish in the oven are beyond me. I have a closet that is nonfunctional for me—the hanging clothes are so high that I cannot reach them, even standing, and have to plan ahead so that I can ask Jordan to get this shirt or that down. But I love my cottage. Christian says I have made it work.

This is not to brag about my health or resilience to my friends who are walking the eighties path with me but to suggest that it helps to give yourself a message of resilience. When I posted about life in a tiny house yesterday, one friend wrote that she didn’t know if she could do that or not, but then concluded she probably could. My message is that we can do almost anything If we set our mind to it.

It seems to me a companion word to resilience is flexibility. It’s too easy to cling to the old ways, the ways we’ve always done things, from cooking to child raising. Living with one of my grown children who is raising an adorable seventeen-year-old son, you have no idea how hard it is to keep from saying, “When you were his age, you had to be home for Sunday supper.” Or some such. A long-time friend was here the other day and mentioned how angry she was to be quarantined at a daughter’s house for Thanksgiving because she developed covid. “But I apologized,” she said, “Their house, their rules.” That’s flexibility. And perhaps apologizing is resilience.

To my friends walking with me, think about those two words: resilience and flexibility. How do they apply to your life?

Okay, sermon over.

 

A bit of borrowed wisdom and some kitchen fails

 

Sharon's happy hour

An online friend, one of those I’ve never met in person but consider a good friend, had a birthday recently, and for her birthday resolve she vowed to follow her mother’s advice to “look up and out” rather than look “down and in.” If you look up and out, you focus on the world outside yourself and what you can do to make it better. If you look down and in, you are focusing on yourself. Such focus leads to self-absorption as opposed to a lively interest in the world around you. I can think of lots of reasons to avoid self-absorption—the people I know that spend their days looking down and in tend to be boring, unhappy with their lot in life, obsessed often by minor illnesses. On the other hand, have you recently met someone who seemed genuinely glad to meet you, interested to know who you are and to share thoughts with you? That person is looking up and out. I thought it was such a perfect way of encapsulating attitudes toward life that I wanted to share.

But I must admit I’ve been looking down and in a bit lately. One of the ways I define myself is as a pretty good cook. I may not write recipes and I may be challenged by such things as crispy tofu in lemon-tahini sauce (really?) but I can tackle most basic dishes, even some fancy ones—okay I do really want to try Beef  Wellington. I can even often fiddle with a problematic recipe and make it work out. And I enjoy doing all that. So kitchen fails upset me more than I should allow them to.

Friday night I was dining alone and decided to treat myself to a piece of salmon. I’d seen a recipe for roast salmon filet with a horseradish glaze—I like horseradish as well as the next Englishman (perhaps an inheritance from my dad) so I tried it. Probably the recipe was a mistake in judgment on my part in the first place. The recipe was for four servings, and I was adjusting it to one. Plus the lovely piece of salmon I had was the tail end of what had apparently been a whole half—rather thin, so I adjusted the amount of glaze and the roasting time. Even so, I ended up with a piece of slightly underdone fish with a thick sauce. I dislike overdone, dry fish and I love sashimi, but this piece was just thick enough I wanted it done more. And the sauce didn’t make things better. Fail #1.

The next night I was expecting three people for supper—Jean, who often has supper with me, and Greg and Jaimie, who usually come for happy hour. I went all out—made an overnight salad the night before, spent a bit of time that day making broccoli/cheese soup according to a Southern Living recipe. Jaimie, who is an excellent cook, brought a spinach/artichoke dip, and I immediately sensed one problem. I should have provided the appetizer, so that the total menu had a plan. As it was, we had a lot of vegetables. As Greg suggested, a lot of roughage that might have consequences. And everybody ate so much of the dip, they weren’t hungry for dinner. Especially Jean,, who didn’t try the soup at all. Then it turned out Greg can’t abide broccoli. I said the soup had a lot of cheese, and he said he’d try it. But he didn’t. Jaimie and I were the only ones who ate it, and she took a baggie home for lunch, but I think she did that to make me feel better. Anybody want broccoli/cheese soup? I have it in the fridge, and I’m kind of soured on it now. It used to be my Jamie’s favorite, and I’d long been thinking I’d like some but hadn’t cooked it because Christian, like Greg, abhors it, can’t even stand to be in the house when it’s cooked. Jacob loves broccoli, but he’s not been around much for me to try it on him.

So tonight I sort of redeemed myself. Tuesday night is the night Mary comes for happy hour, and tonight we included longtime friend Sharon in honor of her birthday tomorrow. I stuffed mushrooms with my mom’s cheese mixture, made a spread with a cream cheese/curry base topped with cranberry chutney and garnished with green onions, and trotted out the rest of the ranch dip I’d served last night. I think Sharon felt well feted, and I felt redeemed a bit. The mushrooms were really good, but one problem with ordering your groceries is that you don’t get to choose the mushrooms—I have never stuffed such tiny “shrooms.”

Anyway I feel better about things now, maybe for having gotten this off my chest. Tomorrow, I think I’ll pitch the soup (my mom would be so horrified at the waste) and make the family spaghetti for supper. And maybe tonight I’ll dream of Beef Wellington.

Family and friends--and who we are

 

 

Sophie, because she too, deserves
that moment of consideration from me.

This morning a friend posted a story on Facebook. She went into the bathroom only to find an empty toilet paper roll and a new roll of paper sitting on the windowsill. Obviously, her husband had put the roll there but hadn’t taken time to put it on the dispense. What would your reaction have been? I admit I would probably have been angry, at least briefly. Well, I like to think the me who I am today wouldn’t have been, but I can tell you for sure the me who was married long years ago would have been angry. Ranting that he couldn’t even take time to install the paper on the holder. But Brandy, my friend, said she thought to herself, “He’s so busy, and he has so much on his mind, how thoughtful of him to make sure I had a new roll.” Wow! Learning lesson there.

I’ve been thinking all week about how we live with each other and how we treat each other. About being on autopilot with knee jerk reactions or stopping for that brief second before we speak to think through a situation. I fall down a lot of the time. Although I am not married any longer, I live in close proximity to my daughter and her husband, And there are lots of times I should keep my mouth shut or investigate before I speak. Tonight, me: “I never did get my dishwasher detergent back after it went into your house.”

Jordan: “I put it back. Did you look?”

Me: “Not for a few days.” I was acting on old information. At the very least I could have framed it as a question: “Did you ever bring my dish detergent back?”

This morning in church the sermon was about the sinful woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. A difficult scene for us today to understand, believers or not, but it has nothing to do with washing feet and everything to do with how we perceive people. The Pharisee, in whose home Jesus was at the time, saw only a sinner. Jesus saw a woman who repented of her sins and who grieved. He saw an individual, not a stereotype.

I know from my own life how easy it is to look at a person but not see them—the difficult spouse, the impatient child, the cranky colleague, the annoying neighbor. We just don’t want to take time to find out who they really are, why they are annoying or cranky or difficult. In a surprise ending, after urging us to really look at others in his sermon this morning, Dr. Peterman urged us to take a deep to take a deep look at ourselves. Are we really who we like to think we are—or is there room for change.

I think a lot of it comes down to how we treat other people. Consideration means many things—It means checking our reactions before acting impulsively, it mean thinking about the other person and not just ourselves. It even means accepting help gratefully rather than resenting what is not done. It means putting others first at times—not all the time. Nobody is that perfect and self-sacrificing, but if you watch, you’ll find the instances when you should put that difficult spouse, the impatient child, the cranky colleague, the annoying neighbor first, at least for a minute or two.

One of my favorites of Jordan’s friends is the mom of a lovely, seventeen-year-old daughter, sweet, polite, accomplished. But the mom says sometimes she wants to say,
“Get over yourself.” It’s become one of my favorite pieces of advice, for me, and for those to whom I am close enough to say it.

Rain, blessed rain

I woke this morning to foggy windows and an almost-chilly cottage. Last night just as I was going to bed the wind picked up and rain came down—real rain, not the tentative sprinkles we’ve seen for the last couple of days. This was hard, soaking rain that would do the gardens good and made the world smell of wet earth. Sophie and I sat in the open doorway for too long, soaking in the smell and the wetness. And then I slept soundly, much later in the morning than usual. I feel refreshed, as though I can take on the heat of the coming summer.

My mom was a great advocate of catching more flies with a teaspoon of sugar than a cup of vinegar. I put her philosophy into use today. Jordan’s been having a difficult time with the local chain pharmacy where I’ve had my business for years. Yesterday, she tried to return something I had been told I could take back, but she was refused. She announced we were going up there tomorrow, shopping day, to demand the refund and then we were taking our business elsewhere. I hated that because they have all my records and all my various physicians show them as the pharmacy of record.

Today I called, said I was sorry to bother the pharmacist, did he have time to listen, apologized for seeming difficult, said I didn’t mind going elsewhere but I hated to leave behind a reputation as difficult. Result: we can return the drops today while he’s on duty, and he marked my account for no automatic refills (a big part of the problem).

Reminded me of what I read somewhere today: The literal translation of namaste is “the divine spark within me salutes the divine spark within you.” If more people dealt with each other that way, the world would be a different place. I’m not saying either the pharmacist or I had to salute the divine spark, just suggesting we recognized the good in each other, instead of the instant anger. I think you only say “Namaste” when you sincerely mean it.

I’ve been enjoying the last of the salmon Megan brought. Yesterday, I had a salad plate with cold salmon and mayo—Megan had the same but my daughters both heat meat, won’t eat it cold. I love it cold. Today I made salmon salad. Jordan laughed because she had heated and finished her lunch while I was still chopping celery, cucumber, and scallion for my salad. But it was good. I love leftovers (Jay, are you reading this?).

Tonight, Betty and I had another of our dining adventures, and I have to eat a little crow about this one. The owners of an upscale contemporary Mexican restaurant got health conscience and converted the restaurant to healthy foods, probably at least three years ago. With a kind of false bravado, I thought I don’t like kale and quinoa and I’m not going there. But tonight, we went, and it was terrific. Betty had shrimp tacos, I had a good beef burger with yucca fries (couldn’t tell the difference, and the aioli was delicious), and we shared churros. And drank some wine. A fine meal. Now we want to go back for the bison tacos. Shows you about dining with an open mind. I heartily recommend Righteous Foods.

How do you live your life?

I've been thinking a lot the last couple of days about how we live our lives. Someone once said to me that I acted as though I expected something wonderful to happen any minute--and in my life so many wonderful things have happened that I guess my expectations are justified. I have a good friend who has been ill for several years and has gradually withdrawn into herself, staying home, allowing select people into her life but very few of them. I have feared for some time she suffered from major depression as well as the diseases that beset her. But for along time invitations to lunch or dinner have been accepted and then declined at the last minute--she forgot, or she didn't feel well enough. Attempts to suggest that getting out of the house would make her feel better were met with, "I suppose you're right" but no action followed.
I know another woman, an author, who has a diagnosis of an extremely viral kind of cancer, yet she has produced two books since that diagnosis, is all over Facebook and other social media sites, runs a happy household with her husband and three children, and holds down a full-time job. Sometimes when we correspond she's forthright about her uncertain future, but mostly she's upbeat, full of plans, bubbling with joy at her life and her recent writing success. What she almost never mentions is the days she's so sick from chemo she can hardly raise her head. She gets over them and goes on with life. I have great admiration for her--and she's half my age. Well, almost.
None of us can walk in another person's moccasins, and we don't know how we'd react to circumstances such as dire illness. I for one am lucky that at 75, I am beset only by problems mostly managed by medication and the minor aches and pains of aging--a tremor in my left hand, a slight insecurity sometimes when I walk across difficult terrain--but I am basically healthy and happy. I don't know what 'd do if confronted with a life-threatening diagnosis or a shortened life expectancy. But I like to think I'd rush out and do all the things I enjoy--being with family, eating out with friends, cooking for family and friends, as long as I was able.
There's an old saw that appears on Facebook frequently, and now I can't think exactly how it goes but in essence it says happiness is not something you seek from the outside; it's something you find within yourself. And I think research about the relationship between health and happiness is well established.
But I ache and cry for my friend who is so miserable. I guess we all live our lives to our style, and we can't enforce that style on others. So it would do not good now to shake her and say I told you to get out of this house. I can only pray for comfort for her.